Effigies
The flush partially drowned the screams. I remember choking noises, then more water churning. The grunting laughter of the football players holding Jackity upside-down. My bare feet gripping the seat of the handicap toilet. I didn’t pray. I didn’t do anything. We belonged to the Refugees, an ignominious subset of West Nowhere High School. All the usual groups existed every year, never changing despite new faces. Dramaramas, Alphas, Techies, Jackasses, Pinks: They all spat hatred our way. Without any effort at all, I became a Refugee on my first day of ninth grade. Hand-knit acrylic sweater. Free lunch. Greasy hair. We were all guys except one that year, five of us. Firenzo was born with one stubby finger sticking out from his shoulder. He walked around in clogs. Kicked them off, wrote with his feet.
By Kelly Shriver.
Boozing Encouraged
As seen in this month’s Dazed & Confused.
The Missing Links
Significant Objects (and how they got that way) “invite[s] several dozen authors to make up interesting stories about random objects picked up at thrift shops, post[s] them on eBay, and let[s] consumer fetishism take it from there.” * C-MONSTER.net, “where high gets low”, an arts blog. * Australian writers furious at moves to loosen book […]
Cock & Balls
‘I think I’ve left my cock and balls on your mattress,’ he pronounced.
‘No, you haven’t,’ she lied.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘I’m sure,’ she replied.
‘Well, if you’re certain I suppose I’ll have to go,’ he said.
‘I am certain so I suppose you will have to go,’ she replied.
‘I’ll be off then.’
Too busy parting her legs to answer, Luscious Linda reached over to grab Peter Purves’s cock and balls.
Peter Purves climbed the stairs to the exit, with an absent feeling in his centre, a ghostly draught passing between his legs. He felt unbalanced, and very faint.
By Alan McCormick & Jonny Voss.
A tangled relationship with longing: An interview with Clane Hayward
My former editor (bless his heart) probably had book club fantasies, and I think he wanted me to write a book that would appeal to a particular audience. I don’t blame him but I wanted to write a very pointillistic, hallucinogenic, messy, heavily descriptive book about the ridiculousness of being in the armed services during peacetime. I only wanted to write about clanking machinery and hissing valves and listening to The Style Council in Bahrain and the quality of light in Diego Garcia.
Andie Ryan talks to Clane Hayward, author of Nothing Is Fixed.